Friday, December 16, 2005

Robert Novak out at CNN, on at Fox News...

Robert Novak, the conservative commentator and columnist who was a fixture on CNN since its inception a quarter century ago, said today that he was joining its more popular competitor, Fox News, as an occasional contributor.

Mr. Novak described his move in a telephone interview after CNN released a statement saying that his "tenure on the network" would end on Dec. 31, when his contract expires. Mr. Novak had not appeared on CNN since Aug. 4, when he uttered an expletive and then bolted from a live interview in which he had been needled by James Carville, a Democratic strategist, as pandering to "these right wingers."

Their interviewer, Ed Henry, later said on the air that Mr. Novak was aware that he was about to be asked about the continuing fallout from a 2003 column in which he identified a C.I.A. operative by name. That column relied on a leak that has since become the subject of a wider-ranging government investigation that resulted in the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.

Mr. Novak said that his departure from CNN had been "a mutual decision," one that seemed obvious to him after the network canceled the two main programs on which he had appeared, "Crossfire" and "The Capital Gang."

"I turn 75 in February and I wanted to do a good deal less," he said. On Fox News, he said, he will serve as an occasional contributor, though not for any particular program.

In the statement, Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN's domestic networks, made no mention of Mr. Novak's role in the C.I.A. leak case, or of the August incident. Instead, the network wished him well and thanked him for his "incisive analysis" over the years.